Flying Spares meets Royal standard
Leicestershire-based Flying Spares is celebrating the successful completion of what it described as it toughest ever reconditioning project.
The world’s largest independent supplier of Rolls-Royce and Bentley parts rebuilt an RS60 V8 for a rare Bentley Brooklands Coupé owned by a member of the Bahrain royal family.
Flying Spares’ technical services division (TSD) manager Andy Thwaites said: “We like a challenge, so we said we’d take a look. Some weeks later a stack of boxes arrived at our workshop in Market Bosworth. They contained not only the engine but the gearbox, turbos, wiring loom and all kinds of ancillaries. It was a high tech jigsaw puzzle, but we soon pieced it together and identified the fault. The camshaft follower (a hydraulic tappet) was shattered, so it had rotated around the cam causing extensive damage. The whole engine had to be stripped down.
“The main block we sent away to be repaired and line bored, but everything else was done in-house. Our head of quality control Malcolm Crane and metallurgist John Smith, sadly no longer with us, manufactured a new tappet block entirely from scratch. When all the parts were ready we reassembled the engine exactly to Bentley’s specification, testing literally hundreds of tolerances.
“It was an incredibly intricate build, certainly the toughest recon project I’ve ever worked on. It’s fair to say that not many workshops in the world have the tools and technical expertise to complete such a challenge, so I’m incredibly proud of the team. It’s a great achievement and another happy Flying Spares customer.”
